


Dawn goes down to day

by MementoVivere



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Headcanon Study, Inquisitor Barriss, Inquisitor Mara Jade, Self-Indulgent, may be edited, minor character love, plus ahsoka because we all know I can't write anything without ahsoka
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 06:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6318280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MementoVivere/pseuds/MementoVivere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The shocks of the Battle of Endor are felt around the galaxy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dawn goes down to day

**Author's Note:**

> This is a massively self-indulgent piece I wrote when I should have been working on my kink meme prompt. Or, you know, schoolwork. 
> 
> Some headcanons regarding the Inquisitors are inspired by On The Edge Of The Devil's Backbone by bedlamsbard and Reforging by mylordshesacactus. I take no credit for these.
> 
> Title is from Sax Rohmer #1 by the Mountain Goats.

_News travels fast._

People flood the streets. The local news has shown them all day, chanting in too many languages to count, throwing anything they can get their hands on—rocks, bottles, speeder parts. On the holoscreen above the bar a girl of perhaps thirteen or fourteen scales the spire of the government building, her cheeks flushed and long dark hair whipping in the wind. She shouts something, inaudible over the cheering of the crowd.

Inside the cantina the patrons are rowdy, ecstatic. An old drinking song starts up in the back and travels around the room, different voices fading in and out. People toast to victory, to freedom, to those crazy bastards in the Rebellion.

In a dark corner table, Ketsu Onyo smiles into her black ale.

 _Atta girl, Sab’ika,_ she thinks. _You and your little friends might pull this off after all._

Everyone is high on the occurrence of the impossible when the pretty waitress gasps and drops her tray. Heads turn as glasses shatter on the duracrete floor.

Ketsu follows the woman’s eyes to see the screen displaying the news, where the holocam does not cut away quickly enough as the climbing girl crashes to the ground, blood spreading across the front of her shirt.

When the scene does change, the situation it reveals is no less horrifying. Protesters are being gunned down by stormtroopers in riot gear. A Rodian man tries to wrestle a blaster rifle from one of the troopers, and has his head bashed in with the weapon for his troubles. People are being shot, electrocuted, concussed.

The cantina begins to hum again with an entirely different energy. People are cursing, slamming their fists into tables and counters, furious. _This is a massacre!_ One man draws his blaster and exits the cantina; two more follow him, and soon most of the cantina is racing out the door, headed for the riot.

They’re not alone; out in the street, it looks as though the whole city is headed to even the odds.

Ketsu stands up as well, dropping a few credits on the table—she may kill for a living, but she’s a civilized being who pays for her drinks—and reaching for her spear.

Later tonight, she’ll ask herself when she started to fight _for_ something. She’s not that sort of person, never has been. She’s always considered herself the sort to stand for the credits in her pocket before any greater cause, and to sell her allegiance to the highest bidder.

When did that change?

 

The doors to the government building have already been torn down by the mob. _Less work for me_ , Ketsu thinks, clutching her spear tighter and shoving her way through the riot. The building is being destroyed piece by piece, with people dismantling computer terminals, tearing through furniture, smashing anything breakable. She sees a girl throwing paint and thinks of Sabine.

(She blames Sabine for her getting involved at all, honestly. It’s not as if she _wanted_ to be a good person.)

(She blames Sabine for a lot of things these days.)

Ketsu doesn’t waste time with destruction. She’s going to find every power-hungry, bloated Imp in the building and rip their guts out—if they have any to begin with, that is.

 _“Ner al’verde cuyir kaden, ni cuyir ner al’verde,”_ she says, her voice low and dangerous. She is _Ketsu fucking Onyo_ —notorious bounty hunter, smuggler, assassin, Black Sun deputy, part-time terrorist—and when she arrives, the poor bastards won’t know what hit them.

She never would have guessed fighting for something could be so _satisfying_.

 

* * *

 

_News travels fast._

The room is pristine, lifeless. There are no possessions or personal effects. The bed has been made with hospital corners and crease-free bedding, and the single chair is at a perfect ninety-degree angle to the wall.

First Sister stands in her quarters, thinking.

Already people are rioting in the streets, on Coruscant, Naboo, Mandalore, even backworld planets like Tatooine and Ord Mantell. Soon they will come for her, and for the others.

This doesn’t bother her. First Sister is used to waiting.

 

She heard the Child’s screams before she had any idea what was wrong. They were long, agonized, as though they were being pulled from her throat.

Not much fazes First Sister these days, but something about the way that her former student wailed had seemed _wrong_.

When she found her, the woman had fallen to her knees, her eyes rolled back into her head as if she were having a fit. She didn’t respond to First Sister’s presence, or to being addressed, only howled like a woman possessed before finally collapsing.

First Sister had meant to ask the Child what had happened when she woke.

Then the transmission came in.

Now she stands in her quarters, thinking over what she knows. The Emperor and Darth Vader died on the Death Star. Both of them, gone in one fell swoop. She wonders how she should feel.

There’s no question as to what the Child feels. Her agony was palpable; she must have been having some sort of vision. First Sister worries for this girl—she’s hardly older than First Sister was when she realized _she_ had lost everything. She knows how she reacted (poorly.) Then, like now, the order of things was changing drastically. Then, like now, a young woman had watched the life she had always meant to live become meaningless.

She can only hope that Mara Jade will not make the same mistakes that Barriss Offee did.

This is what will come next: a power vacuum, people running around like spooked eopies trying to establish themselves as the new leader. It won’t work. This is the beginning of the end.

First Sister knows she should fear this, but Barriss feels vindicated. The corrupt society she hated so much in her youth is falling apart; perhaps a better one will take its place.

It takes a moment for her to recognize what she is feeling as hope, something that she hasn’t felt in a long time.

It’s a pleasant feeling.

 

* * *

 

_News travels fast._

Mara Jade wakes up alone.

She doesn’t want to believe it, but she must. She _saw_ it happen as clearly as if she had been there herself, even though it doesn’t seem possible.

How could this happen?

 _Because you failed_.

It was her fault. She _knows_ it was her fault. She failed her master on Tatooine, and she paid for it. She thought that the price of her failure was being sent to Mustafar, forced to babysit Inquisitors-in-training and kowtow to the First Sister, but now she knows that this was only the beginning of her suffering.

She lays perfectly still, barely breathing. Her universe is falling apart around her. She wants to die.

She can’t.

_Skywalker._

He’s still alive and unharmed, probably celebrating his victory with his disgusting anarchist friends somewhere. Not suffering for what he’s done. Not even aware that he has destroyed her life.

He’ll come for the rest of them, she thinks. Even if he doesn’t know about her, or about this place, he’ll find out. And someone who thinks themselves as noble as Skywalker does won’t allow people to be trained and weaponized for the enemy.

Let him come, Mara thinks. She’ll be waiting for him, ready to finish what she started.

Skywalker will pay, and she will atone for her failure.

 

* * *

 

_News travels fast._

“He’s dead!”

The warroom door bangs open to reveal a young woman with a datapad. “He’s dead, the Emperor’s dead! The Rebels got him!”

There is silence. For a moment, no one moves, as if time has stopped around the Free Ryloth leaders. Numa can feel her heart thrumming in her throat, her stomach, her fingertips.

“Tann’rar,” says General Syndulla at last. “Tell us exactly what you heard.”

Tann nods sharply and adopts a more professional stance. “Yes, sir. The Rebel Alliance sent two teams on an ultimately successful mission to destroy the Death Star. Both Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader were confirmed present on the station at the time of the battle and are believed to have died in the explosion. I have several men and women attempting to reach your—our contacts in the Alliance for more details; at the moment this is the information I have.”

The general’s fingers tighten around the edge of the table. Numa presses her shaking hands over her mouth as the implications dawn on her.

Both leaders gone. A fight for power, all the higher-ups wanting to the throne for themselves. The Empire will be weak, disorganized, shattered into factions, too busy between fighting amongst themselves and fighting against the Rebels to worry about a third party.

Her laugh bubbles up before she can stop herself, filling the room with the sound of incredulous delight. “Both of them!” she cries, her smile growing behind her still-trembling fingers. “They did it! _They did it!”_

 “The fight is not over, Numa,” says General Syndulla sternly. Numa expects a lecture after this, but turns to see the general staring down silently at the table, his jaw set.

It takes her a moment to understand.

“Tann,” she says in a low voice, walking over to the pale blue woman. “You said that there were two teams to destroy the Death Star?”

Tann nods. “Yes, Commander. One strike team on Endor to take out the base, and fighter pilots to destroy the station itself.”

“And you’re looking for word on…” One lek twitches in the direction of General Syndulla.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“I assure you, if I knew anything more I would have told the general. We have tried to reach her since the news came in, but _everyone_ is trying to reach someone right now.”

“Cast a wider net,” says Numa. “Try her husband, try her squadron. We have to have access to _someone_.”

“Yes, ma’am,” says Tann, and runs from the room—to do just that, Numa hopes.

By now the stillness has broken, replaced by chattering and laughing and crying and cheering and worrying and wondering, in Ryl and in Basic and in Huttese and in combinations of the three, punctuated with waving hands and arms and lekku.

Numa hadn’t realized that she never truly expected to be free until freedom finally seemed possible.

 

* * *

 

_News travels fast._

Ahsoka Tano has been sitting in the engine room for a while now. With any luck, no one will think to look for her here. She doesn’t want to explain everything to people who don’t know. She doesn’t want people who _do_ know asking if she’s all right—she hasn’t been all right since she was fifteen—or, even worse, how she _feels_.

She feels everything. She feels nothing.

         The master and the apprentice, both dead and gone. She’s safe from them now, her soldiers are safe, her friends are safe, the children she’s tried so hard to keep hidden are safe.

But her infinitesimal chance at getting Anakin Skywalker back is gone, too.

She didn’t even feel him die. Somehow, that’s the thought that keeps running through her head. Their connection had been severed long ago, on that day when the world fell apart, and Ahsoka is certain that this is the only thing that kept her alive. She had never expected that she would outlive him, unless perhaps it were by seconds in an act of self-sacrifice.

Nevertheless, she had always thought that _if_ , by some cosmic accident, he were to die first, she would feel it. She never thought she would find out that the man who rewrote her life had died through something as pedestrian as a _radio broadcast_.

 _Don’t think_ , she tells herself, resting her head against her knees. _Just stop thinking. You’ll feel better._

 

She’s lost track of how long she’s been sitting like this, lost in the hum of the machinery and the effort not to think, when she senses someone next to her.

“Lady?”

A small hand comes to rest on one of Ahsoka’s lekku. “Lady, are you okay?”

When she looks up, she sees Alora standing next to her, looking worried.

“What are you doing here, little one? I thought you were with the others.”

 “I felt you in here,” says Alora. “Really, I _did_. And you were sad. So I thought I should go find you.”

“That was very thoughtful of you,” Ahsoka tells her. “But you don’t need to worry about me. I’ll be all right.”

There is a small _thump_ as Alora sits down next to her, and Ahsoka worries briefly about having a child so close to so much machinery; she hopes that the shields on the dangerous parts are all functioning properly, but she’s just too tired to make Alora leave right now. She did far worse things as a child, and she survived.

“You’re still sad,” says Alora. “Why are you sad?”

“I miss someone, that’s all.”

“Who do you miss?”

“An old friend I had. A long time ago, before you were born.”

“Oh,” says Alora. “Did they die?”

Ahsoka sighs, looking back at her apprentice—Alora, sweet little Alora, so caring and curious and _alive_. “Alora, do you want to hear a story?”

“About your friend?”

“That’s right. And about me. And about you, too, in a way.”

“Is it a nice story?” Alora asks.

“Sometimes,” says Ahsoka, and the answer feels right. 


End file.
